It all started with the Copyright. is the principle on which music publishing is based. When you write a song, that work belongs to you. Anyone wishing to use it must gain permission from you, and it’s presumed that you will require a payment of some kind in exchange. The important point here: the songwriter owns his or her “copyright” upon creation of the song. This is why, in principle, you are already a publisher as soon as you finish your first song. In week 12 of this course, we will have a whole lesson dedicated to copyright protection issues.

The actual business of music publishing goes back to the nineteenth century, when songs began to appear for sale in the form of sheet music. A composer would take a song to a publisher–who would print the sheet music, sell it, and then split the money with the writer. As technology developed, the phonograph record, radio, television, and the compact disc displaced sheet music, but the principle of music publishing remains the same. A songwriter sells his or her “copyright” (the “right to copy” the song) to a music publisher. The music publisher then grants licenses (for a fee) to whoever wants to use the song, whether it’s a record company, a radio or television broadcast, a film company, or an advertiser. If all goes well, the publisher then splits whatever money is derived from those licenses with the songwriter.  The term itself is derived from “the right to copy”.